Technology Taking Over Society

A common theme I found while reading Fahrenheit 451 was how technology was taking over the people's lives. Everything was there to help make the people's lives easier. Reading this reminded me a lot of Adoleus Huxley's Brave New World, which I had to read last year. In fact, I found a couple of things in common with Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 that made me laugh to myself. The main thing was the enormous amount of technology that was put into the novels. For instance, the people have giant television screens installed in their homes which allows them to interact with people wherever, whenever. Basically, it was Ray Bradbury's idea of cell phones. Also, as I have said before, the sea shells Millie puts in her ears are today's iPods and mp3 players. Because, Guy can put the sea shells in his ear and hear the news and different radio frequencies. There were also the green bullets Faber and Guy used near the middle of the novel. I compared those to today's hands free bluetooth devices. The difference being that the green bullets were put into the ear, much like a hearing aid. At least, that is what I gathered from the descriptions given. I thought the automatic door system was neat, and I noticed that Ray Bradbury must have thought a house could function by itself in the future. At least start slowly advancing that direction. I believe we will soon have the sensor doorbells, alerting us when someone arrives at our door. I am still not so sure about the cars driving 100 miles an hour on the highway. I think that if technology does advance the way it is, we will be able to safely eventually. It was just entertaining and interesting to read Ray Bradbury's portrayal of the future, and how predictable us humans truly are. Because, Fahrenheit 451 was written in 1950, so there was no way cell phones or iPods had been invented yet and still, he was correct in the technological advances.